Commentary and analysis on markets, personal finance, and wealth building from a contrarian perspective. "I believe in the discipline of mastering the best that other people have ever figured out. I don’t believe in just sitting there and trying to dream it up all yourself. Nobody’s that smart."
— Charlie Munger

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Saturday, November 15, 2014

Putin is going to make us profits

(skip)As you can see, the US has to import over 90% of what it uses. That's a huge
shortfall-and it's persisted for many years. How has the country made it up?

In a word: Russia.

America's former Cold War archenemy-and antagonist in the unfolding sequel,
the Colder War-has in fact been keeping the US nuclear fires burning, through
conduits like the Megatons to Megawatts Program.

(skip)

In January 2014, Sergei Kiriyenko, head of Russian energy giant Rosatom, was
bursting with enthusiasm when he predicted that Russia's recent annual production
rate of 6.5 million pounds of uranium would triple in 2015.

Rosatom puts Russia's uranium reserves in the ground at 1.2 billion pounds
of yellowcake, which would be the second largest in the world; the company
is quite capable of mining 40 million pounds per year by 2020. Add in Russia's
foreign projects in Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and Mongolia, and annual
production in 2020 jumps to more than 63 million pounds. Include all of Russia's
sphere of influence, and annual production easily could amount to more than
140 million pounds six years from now.

No other country has a uranium mining plan nearly this ambitious. By 2020,
Russia itself could be producing a third of all yellowcake. With just its close
ally Kazakhstan chipping in another 25%, Russia would have effective control
of more than half of world supply.That's clout. But it doesn't end there.

I am reading Marin's book about Russia and the new cold war and how energy fits into this. In fact, Putin is using Russia's energy clout to make Russia a player on the world stage. Putin was pretty up front about this in his masters thesis. The book is good and I suggest reading it if you interested in energy and Geo-politics. You will not see this kind of stuff on US news channels or newspapers. Russia will emerge as one of the biggest power brokers in the next few years just because of its energy reserves.Russia has been pivoting away from Europe and the US and moving towards Asia. The reason they are doing that is because that is where all of the demand growth for their energy exists.